Two Richter Grau paintings and one Blinky Palermo Stoffbilder fabric painting are coming up for auction in London during Frieze. The big ones are both from the Crex Collection, which I thought had sold everything at Sotheby’s a few years ago, but I guess not, because they’re selling stuff at Christie’s now.
The black textile Palermo and the large grey Richter in the evening sale, are illustrated side by side in the essays, but at a scale that looks like they’re a pair. Which they are not. These paintings, while awesome, are not the same size, or the same year, or even the same materials. And it kind of annoyed me enough to composite together this image, to show their actual scale. There’s another, much smaller Grau painting for sale in the day sale, and I stuck that in, too.
As it happens, Palermo and Richter DID make a grey painting diptych together, by fingerpainting, and its two panels formed a square. It was destroyed. Anyway, I think I would want all of these, but I’d want the fingerpainting collab more.